Grope

Grope

“He grabbed your ass,” Tyler said to his girlfriend, and when Shannon didn’t respond he sat his drink down on the knotty wooden table and squeezed the air with both hands. “Your ass.”

Behind Shannon, the dusty window looked out onto the street where the sign for The Walrus illuminated passersby in orange light. No one seemed to know that the world was ending tonight.

Shannon tapped the sides of her beer bottle with her nails. She pushed the bottle and listened to it grinding across the dark wooden table, and then she raised her hands and squeezed twice, once for each word: “I know.”

Tyler ran his hands through his hair and stared at the vintage poster hanging beside him. A dirty pirate smiled at no one in particular while a bright blue parrot on his shoulder guzzled a bottle of rum: “Drink Blackstrap Molasses Rum! Because even your tongue wants to taste the booty!” Tyler grimaced.

The couple had been coming to this hole-in-the-wall bar since they’d moved to New York almost a year ago. The Walrus wasn’t their favorite establishment—there were certainly cleaner places to get a drink—but tonight they were out to see Strawberry Lemonade, an indie pop band for which they shared a mutual fondness.

Strawberry Lemonade had yet to take the stage, though their instruments sat yearningly in front of the tattered red curtains. Que Sera Sera, Strawberry Lemonade’s secret pseudonym, was printed in bulbous letters across the bass drum.

“Are you going to keep bringing this up all night?” Shannon asked. A strand of blond hair fell down across her forehead, looking almost red in the dim light. She shook her head and more hair fell down beside it, covering her right eye. Her one-eyed gaze was so fierce that Tyler found himself turning back to Captain Flint and his rum-swilling parrot, and then Shannon said, “That’s what I thought.”

From the window of The Walrus, patrons could see the spires of capitalism stretching up all around. Nestled between a modern high-rise to the east and a grocery chain to the west, The Walrus was nearly invisible to the world beyond its few patrons. All these years it had survived almost entirely through good luck and the forgetfulness of powerful people. Everyone just assumed The Walrus would up and disappear one day, less because of magic and more through the degenerative powers of memory.

Both Shannon and Tyler had seen several of the night’s patrons in the past, but they knew only the woman at the bar by name. Jordan was always here—they could scarcely remember a single night she hadn’t been lounging at the bar trying to pick up whoever came in. She was pretty, probably in her mid-thirties, and always willing to make the first move. Most men would buy her a drink, but something about her always drove them away—maybe it was the way she leaned aggressively forward or maybe it was her vulgar fucking language. No one could tell. And when they left she would resume position: head on her arm and eyes locked on the entryway, waiting for her dream to kick down the front door and carry her away.

Earlier in the night a younger guy had bought her two drinks, one more than she got from most, before getting up to go to the bathroom. After a half hour passed, the boy had not returned. Jordan sighed, moved her coaster out of the way, and turned to face the ever-promising doorway. People called Jordan a lot of things, but no one ever called her a quitter.

A man walked out on stage and cleared his throat into the microphone. Neither Tyler nor Shannon had ever seen him before, but his simple gray suit clearly announced that he wasn’t with the overly flamboyant Strawberry Lemonade.

“Because he grabbed your ass!” Tyler barked. Having heard his loud voice, he paused and took a breath. “Since when is that okay?”

“You don’t…” Shannon started. Her mouth hung open as she searched for the right words. Instead, she found only a sigh. “Let it go. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Just let it go,” the parrot parroted.

“Let it, let it go,” the stranger said, and then with excitement he added, “It’s going. It’s going.”

The couple groped about in the vast expanse of words and thoughts, memories and possibilities, searching for the answer that used to exist. The things they used to say and do to keep each other grounded.

“Refills?” their waiter Damien asked, interrupting their manifest frustration. He was a slender college boy wearing a short-sleeve white button-up shirt, a tight black vest that exacerbated his lissome frame, and a bowtie that would have fit around Shannon’s wrist. A small drop of grenadine glistened on his shirt from an earlier spill and white gloves covered his hands. Shannon ordered rum and coke and Tyler ordered another gin and tonic.

“So that’s one Billy Bones and one Anne Bonny?” Damien swung his long black bangs out of his eyes. They nodded. “Lemon?” he asked Shannon. “Lime?” he asked Tyler. They nodded. The Walrus was famous for its pirate-themed drinks, or at least that’s what the staff claimed. One look around The Walrus and it became clear that the establishment probably wasn’t famous for much.

“Que Sera Sera!” someone shouted from the stage. Shannon and Tyler looked ahead and saw Steven, the lead singer, glistening on stage in a white disco jumpsuit, a great pink lightning bolt rocketing from his chest down to his backstage plans. “Que Sera Sera!” he yelled again.

And the small crowd shouted it back: “Que Sera Sera!”

Then Dave and Maxine, the keytarist and drummer respectively, joined Steven on stage and the three clasped hands and bowed. Tonight, Dave and Maxine were wearing hot pink suits over shimmering undershirts. The biggest surprise of the evening—other than the aforementioned end of the world—was that each bandmate had bleached their once-brown locks. The lead singer held the microphone to his chest and the room lit up as if electrocuted by his raunchy bolt. Their first song “Great, Lakes!” started right when a giant hole exploded in the roof. The flapping pieces of the roof rocketed upwards, dragged by some unforeseen force. Up above, a large white-tailed deer peered into the hole, listening to the band while a great waft of gin swept over the bar. The deer bellowed and rattled his antlers against the broken roof, its feet clip-clopping metronomically.

When Tyler and Shannon turned back from Strawberry Lemonade, their table had grown by a foot in either direction.

“They used to be better,” Shannon said, arms crossed.

“Some of their solo stuff is better than the new album.” Tyler wrinkled his forehead trying to think of the last good thing they’d made together, but the pirate poster beside him interrupted his thoughts.

“Argh, think ‘bout the singles, lad,” the dirty pirate said.

Damien brought them their drinks, but when he tried to walk by the newly enlarged table he tripped and dropped someone’s Calico Jack. Jordan kicked her feet up onto a stool and roared with laughter, clapping her hands and tossing her head back. Damien was all apologies, down on his knees soaking up liquor and glass with his beautiful gloves, but when he cut his hand on a shard of glass, Jordan grabbed her coaster and knelt beside him on the ground. A bead of blood diffused through Damien’s gloved fingertip, spreading from a circle to a web-like star.

“Nice mittens,” Jordan said, using the coaster to push the glass onto Damien’s apron, which he then carried to the trash before stepping into the kitchen.

“Doe,” said the stranger from his place at the bar. “So low dee doe.”

When Damien returned with a broom and dustpan he was down one bloody glove and one glass-covered apron. Strawberry Lemonade had finished their first song, so the white-tailed deer on the roof bellowed for another. Maxine counted them off and they began again.

Shannon looked to the faraway Tyler and raised her voice. “Being a girl in the city is bullshit.”

Tyler shrugged. “Being anyone in the city is bullshit.”

The table grew again, even less subtly than before, barely missing Damien’s hip as he sidled past. Shannon glared. “When was the last time you got groped?”

There was a loud blood-curdling scream from the bar.

Tyler screamed back. “When was the last time you wore something less revealing?”

Behind them, Jordan was latched onto the bar, her legs high above her in the sky. She was screaming for help and her voice was shattering. One by one her fingers slipped until the stranger indolently watched her fly upwards. The deer gave her a curious grunt as she flew by, and then she continued moving out into a fold in space, a maelstrom amongst the stars that was spinning, smearing old light in the darkness.

Shannon spat words at Tyler: “So I deserved it?”

Tyler’s smile left as quickly as it arrived. “I just…” His eyes scanned the bar for the correct answer. “I was kidding.”

“Yeah?” Shannon pursed her lips and looked almost like she meant to smile. “And since when have you been so fucking funny?”

At the bar, the stranger was ordering a drink from Damien. He babbled and Damien laughed, “One John Silver, coming up.”

Strawberry Lemonade was floating, rotating in their cords, but singing nonetheless. Steven floated out over his small audience and they passed him around like a beach ball. The cords wrapped tighter around him with each pass, eventually tying his arms to his side. But Steven never stopped singing. The deer on the roof was still peering in, curious. And Damien continued to serve the stranger at the bar.

Tyler tried to speak again. “Look, it’s just that—”

There was an explosion. The Duane Reade next door had just blown up. The street was filled with screams as shoppers ran outside wearing flames like the next hottest fad. They tried to stop, drop, and roll, but the maelstrom had them now. One by one, the screaming shoppers took off into the sky like fireworks, leaving a brief bright legacy trailing behind. The strength of the maelstrom had grown and it was now pulling cars upwards and tearing apart the skyline.

But the deer was alone, and in its solitude, had not been affected by the rip in space. The deer bellowed, rattling his antlers on the roof.

The stranger looked down to his feet as he was lifted upwards. He began to spin and shouted to the crowd. His legs were jerked upwards and he scrambled to grab hold of something, anything, and when he flew out the hole in the roof, his hands clasped onto the deer’s antlers.

“Mishigamaa!” the stranger screamed. The deer stood stoically with the stranger flapping behind him like a cape, their silhouette darkened by the astral glow. The deer bellowed.

Shannon sighed and then yelled at Damien. He turned mid-pour and the stream of vodka poured upward toward the maelstrom.

“Shots,” Shannon said.

Damien grabbed two glasses. “What would you like?”

“Does it look like I fucking care?” Shannon said, gesticulating as if she were going to strangle him.

Damien wiped the counter again and sat up two shot glasses.

“Four,” Shannon yelled.

Damien wiped the counter again and sat up four shot glasses. He pulled out a green bottle of whiskey with a red cap. Holding each glass inverted, he poured the maelstrom-induced whiskey upward into the glasses. By the time he’d brought the drinks over, the table had grown so large that it blocked the entire aisle. Damien handed Shannon her two inverted shots and then made the long walk to Tyler. The couple tried pulling the whiskey out with their tongues, but when that was too slow, they gave up, and the four magical shot glasses soared through the roof and into the maelstrom.

“Good boy. Good boy,” said the parrot.

While all this had been happening, no one had noticed Strawberry Lemonade floating toward the hole in the ceiling. They were pulling downward on their cords, but one by one the instruments and microphones were unplugged from the amps and the music was silenced. Steven, however, continued to sing, and Maxine was clacking her sticks together and smacking whatever surface was available. When they were pulled through the hole in the room, they bumped into the deer, and the stranger lost his grip. Suddenly everyone was in free flight.

“Mishi!” the stranger yelled, grasping at air.

Steven swung a lasso with his microphone cord and launched it downwards to grapple a broken piece of the roof. Dave released his keytar to grab Steven’s foot, but the wayward instrument was left floating just above him, still tied tightly to the neck strap. It was this neck strap that Maxine was able to snag with her foot as she ascended drumsticks-first into the sky. The stranger reached out for an outstretched drumstick, but his hands slipped right off, so he crossed his arms and legs as he floated slowly toward the fissure in the sky.

In an effort to help Strawberry Lemonade, the entire audience had climbed on top of a dining table only to be pulled person after person upwards into the sky. They clung to one another and grabbed members of the band when they could. The train of individuals in the sky had grown quickly from just the bandmates to a gaggle of twenty people dangling in space.

Now only Damien could have helped them, but he was too busy pouring cocktails into space.

There was a sound, a groan as the maelstrom tugged harder and harder. Steven’s microphone cord strained against the force and the airborne crowd moved an inch at a time toward the inevitable.

On the bar, the whiskey with the red cap took off through the hole and was quickly followed by all of the liquor on the back shelf. They shot upwards, some shattering and spraying rain at Strawberry Lemonade and their audience.

The showering glass knocked some of the audience members free, and when Steven got hit in the eye with a vodka bottle, he let go of the cord and fell up into space. He scrambled for the booze, but when it was out of his reach, he started belting out the single that had brought Strawberry Lemonade to the public eye. Dave and Maxine released, as did the audience, to follow Steven’s dulcet tones into another life.

Damien, still transfixed by the gravity-defying liquor, was pulled slowly into space as he mixed one final upside-down cocktail. Even the pirate poster had been torn out of its frame with one final “aye, this be goodbye.”

Somewhere near the singing, Damien crossed his legs and tried his drink.

And the white-tailed deer on the roof watched New York pass.

The bar was quiet now.

Only Shannon and Tyler remained.

“So this is it?” she asked, tipping her empty glass to the left and then to the right and then to the left again.

“Yeah, I guess so.” Tyler’s finger traced a line on the table.

“Things do end with a whimper,” Shannon said.

“The city does weird things to people.” Tyler grabbed one of the shot glasses and lifted it off the table. A single drop rolled around the base of the glass, so he slammed it upside down on the table. When he lifted the glass, that small droplet of whiskey took to the air, and that too left them behind. “Should I walk you home?”

Shannon made a mirthless sound. “It’s not exactly the best part of town.”

The deer on the roof bellowed.

—

The deer watched Tyler and Shannon exit to the burn-covered street, pass the rubble of Duane Reade, and turn onto Park Street. Inches separated their hands—inches that would prove insurmountable. And then they were out of sight, already lost to time.

A few minutes later, Jordan emerged, arms slung around Damien as she kissed him on the neck. They stopped by the Duane Reade for doughnuts and were scolded by an old Italian woman for making out against the glass. They didn’t have old haunts yet, but they would. And someday—in five years or a hundred years—those too would disappear into the fissure.

ABOUT US

Defiant Scribe was an online lit mag created for the 21st century. We offered an updated take on the literary magazine with contemporary content: risk-taking writing that was unafraid to explore heavy or taboo topics and featured diverse characters as written by diverse writers. We strived to be always defiant, always unique.

Defiant Scribe concluded in August of 2019. Our entire published library can be found by visiting our edition archives and blog.